October Men

Charlie's and on David's. And between us I reckon we've got

'em where we want 'em—the other side.'

She drew a long breath. 'You mean you can do that—what you said you could—for him?'

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'I can and I will. But they couldn't do anything to him anyway, you know—not when it was self-defence and he'd got Laurie Deacon speaking up for him.' He smiled. 'You never really had anything to worry about.'

She shook her head. 'You don't know, sir. Charlie's quiet and he seems slowlike, but he's got a terrible temper when he's roused. When we were children he near killed another boy once—he'd been teasing Charlie, you see. And there was that business during the war.'

'What business was that? He's never talked about it.'

'He wouldn't, no. But it's still there in his mind after all this time, I know, because he has nightmares about it. Not often, he doesn't, now. But he used to have them regular as clockwork.'

'About the war?'

'About this farmhouse in France, sir.' She stared at him doubtfully, then at the edge of the table. 'I never told anyone about it before exactly, not even Mr. David. . . . But there was this farmhouse. . . . Charlie hadn't done any fighting, because he was in the pioneers and they were retreating. And they were bombed a lot by those aeroplanes that made a screaming noise—'

'Dive bombers.'

'He didn't call them that—Stinkers he called them.'

'Stukas.'

'That's it, sir. All the way back until they were near Dunkirk.

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And the Germans were right behind them then, almost mixed up with them, you might say. And they sent Charlie and some other soldiers to find out if they was in this farmhouse. At night it was—that was really why it was. They couldn't really see what they were doing, you see—'

She was staring at the table edge as if it fascinated her.

'And there was Germans in it. One of them shot at Charlie on the stairway, and Charlie killed him. And then he went up and there was another, and he killed him too. And then he heard this door open, and he went at it with his bayonet, sir—

it was dark, and everyone was shouting and shootin'—'

She raised her eyes to his at last. 'It was the farmer's wife, sir. But he couldn't see, that was the trouble—it was so dark.

And when she screamed out, then the fanner came for him, tryin' to stop him I suppose, and he—he—he didn't know—'

She was pleading with him now.

'It's all right, Clarkie. Of course he couldn't know. No one could have known—it could have happened to anyone. He shouldn't blame himself.'

'That's just it, sir. He doesn't even remember it, or he doesn't seem to remember it clearly, like it was mixed up with the nightmares in his mind.'

'But he's told you about it.'

'No, sir. That was what the army doctor told me in the hospital when he came back, when he wasn't himself like.

He'd got it all written down, the doctor had. That's why—'

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She stopped, staring at him.

That's why.

Richardson stared back, seeing at last, fully and clearly, right through the pathetic tangle.

He could see her fear now, the reason that had shut her mouth: taken by itself, what Charlie had done was no more than pure self-defence, a reflex action. But if this old horror had been resurrected— the big, simple soldier, more likely wilder with fright than with anger, slaughtering a couple of innocent civilians in the dark and by accident, and then cracking up when he'd found out what he'd done—!

He ought to have realised that Clarkie's fear was a practical one, not an emotional response: she might guess what it would do to old Charlie to have that night raked up in court, that memory he'd locked away self-defensively in his subconscious mind. But what she feared was the doctor's record, the dusty proof not only of Charlie's mental instability but also that once before he had killed first and questioned afterwards.

'And it was my fault, Mr. Richardson, sir—I forgot clean about it when I saw the light up here. I made him come, he didn't want to.'

So it wasn't for David's sake, to cover his disappearance, that she had kept quiet, that at least was certain; David had simply become the victim of her concern for Charlie.

But David was no defector, that was certain too: the traitor dummy2

who came to the end of his tether and was forced to abandon his home and his fortune and his country would never have made his getaway happy as a sandboy, excited as a boy with a new bicycle!

He nodded reassuringly at her. 'Don't you fret, Clarkie—it's going to be all right, I promise you. I'll see that Charlie's in the clear, don't you worry.'

But equally David would not have swanned off so happily without any by-your-leave—not when he'd been acting the way he had—unless he'd been up to something, that too had to be faced.